Nazareth 1920

Karimeh Abbud made this photograph of Nazareth at some point in her lifetime. It's a landscape, but it's also a collection of marks, dots, and textures that, when put together, give us this image. I love how the buildings stack up, creating a sense of depth and distance. The way the light hits the structures, creating shadows and highlights, is particularly striking. You can almost feel the warmth of the sun on the buildings. Look closely at the way Abbud handled the details of the architecture, paying attention to the lines and angles of the buildings, and the way they create a sense of perspective. This one vertical conifer, like a punctuation mark, in the lower third of the photo, makes me pause. The surface of the photograph has a kind of dreamy quality. Like so many photos of the time, there is a subtle blurring and softening of lines, that add to the sense of quiet and timelessness. Abbud was a pioneering female photographer in Palestine, and her work reminds me of that of other artists like Gustave Courbet, who sought to capture the beauty and complexity of the world around them. It’s a reminder that art is always in conversation with itself, across time and place.